The healer swallows, but nods. “I wouldn’t betray a patient, sir,” he says. Leon looks at Alastor now.
“Is that true?” the blond fae asks the dryad, his sensic power humming in the room.
“Yes,” says the dryad, his eyes slightly glazed.
It’s as much assurance as I could ask for, so I step toward the counter.
“What do you need me to do?” I ask.
“Your hands, please,” the dryad says. I hold them out, and with his spindly fingers he takes my wrists and flips them over so the palms are facing upward. Then he places his hands over mine and begins conjuring in old Agathyrian again.
The fizz of his magic tickles along my nerves, up into my shoulders and along my neck. It settles there, and I think he’s finished until a strange sensation tugs inside me, like a hand gently pulling on the handle of a door I recognize: the same one that opens when I call on my magic.
The dryad retracts his fingers, his eyes alight with curiosity.
“Did you say you’ve been taking this potion for years? Since you were a child?” the dryad asks. I nod.
“Yes, that makes sense. I imagine you’re aware that your magic has survived its suppression all this time?”
“Yes,” I say, waiting for him to say the words—to name me as a heretic—but his eyes go to Leon, and I think he remembers the fae’s warning.
“Not only did your magic remain intact, but I believe this potion increased it.”
I blink. “It gave memorepower?”
“Indeed. I’ll be direct: You have a lot of magic, my lady. Deep wells of it. Far deeper than most. And I believe the potion was indirectly responsible. From your childhood, your magic grew up constantly fighting the potion’s effects and, like a muscle meeting resistance every day, that made it stronger.”
I shake my head. My parents were so desperate to keep my forbidden magic hidden that they actually gave me more of it. The gods do have a taste for irony. Something occurs to me then, as I picture Etusca handing me the goblet each morning.
“So if I was getting stronger all along, would the doses of the potion need to keep changing?”
“Yes, a skilled healer would know to tweak the suppressant to make up for any long-term resistance,” the dryad says.
Unless the healer in question was suffering with separation from the Miravow and wasn’t being quite as careful as usual. Perhaps she’d missed it when my increasing power meant she needed to strengthen my dose again. She’d been becoming more distant and distracted, after all. Add in the fact that I was reducing my intake of the potion during preparation for my escape, and there could have been several days in a row when my regular dose was much weaker than it needed to be. Enough so that, in my hour of desperation, my power was finally able to break through.
Etusca was so careful after the incident with Bede, constantly examining me, measuring out the potion two, three times. It was because she knew she’d slipped up.
Understanding exactly what happened doesn’t make me feel any better. In fact, a wave of nausea hits me as I contemplate just how careful and precise Etusca had to be as she kept my power in check. Is there any possible explanation where she didn’t completely betray me? Could she have been kept in the dark?
“Would a dryad have to know what this potion was and what it achieves in order to make it?” I ask the healer, still clutching at the feeble hope. “Is there a chance they were just following someone else’s instructions? A recipe they’d been given?”
The dryad hands the vial back to me.
“That, I have no way of knowing. If there was only one dryad administering the potion for all those years, then they would have had to understand the potion well enough to know how to modify it. It’s not as simple as following a recipe. But how much they knew about the intended effects…that’s a question only they can answer.”
It’s not a no, but it doesn’t lift my spirits much as I slip the vial back into my pocket.
“Thank you,” I say, though I can’t say the dryad’s news has been welcome.
“There’s another matter,” Leon says. I’d almost forgotten we weren’t just here for me, and I turn to the prince now, wondering what was so important that we came here instead of heading straight to the border.
Leon doesn’t meet my gaze, instead addressing the dryad.
“It’s something we must discuss in private,” he says, then gestures to Hyllus. As always, the huge fae falls in line without a word, stepping aside from the door and opening it. The three fae look at me expectantly.
“Oh,” I say, finally realizing Leon wants me to leave. Whatever he’s here for, I mustn’t know.
I know it’s stupid to feel hurt—after all, the prince and I barely know each other—but I do. Maybe because I’ve just been forced to confront all the lies I’ve been told, this feels like another shade of it: another set of secrets, another person hiding the truth from me.
